Epic Explains Gears 3 Historical Unlocks

Achievements are the key to getting free stuff, says Gears of War 3's executive producer.

Epic has revealed some of what long-time fans of the Gears of War series can expect to see in Gears 3 as a reward for their dedication, as well as how the game will distribute rewards. Epic's Cliff Bleszinski announced these rewards last year on Twitter.

The game will root around through your gamertag looking for achievements from previous Gears games, and then dole out rewards based on your past deeds. Gears 3 executive producer Rod Fergusson, said that achievements were the easiest way to track what a player had done in past games. This meant that it wasn't a case of reaching level 100 in the Gears of War, it was a case of reaching level 100 and winning a match on the Snowblind DLC pack for Gears 2, thus earning the "Veteran Gear" achievement. "Get that achievement and that'll get you something," he said. "You have to have the Veteran Gear achievement."

Fergusson said that he, and a few of his Epic co-workers, would be putting in some time with the first Gears of War in order to pick up the achievements they missed, particularly those for ranked multiplayer. He made it clear, however, that all of the unlocks will be purely cosmetic, and will not alter gameplay in any way. The majority of unlocks will be chrome weapon skins, although the gold Lancer and Hammerburst from the previous game will also make an appearance. Rather fittingly though, it seems that players can only have them in Gears 3 if they had them in Gears 2.

This isn't the first time that Epic has rewarded its fans of course; in Gears 2 you could unlock content based on your actions in the first Gears of War. The studio had even grander ambitions for Gears 3, with achievements from other Epic games like Bulletstorm and Shadow Complex unlocking content as well. Unfortunately, the cross-franchise unlocks had to be scrapped, after it came to light that reading the achievements for those games was pretty much impossible.

Gears of War 3 is scheduled for release for Xbox 360 on September 20th.